The Unexpected Peril of a Brokered Convention

By Wesley Pruden
WashingtonTimes.com

Ohio Gov. John Kasich (AP)

This may be the year they gave an election and
everybody wanted to stay home. Neither Republicans
nor Democrats have a front-runner anybody likes very
much, and there’s nobody on the bench who can hit a
curve ball.

Donald Trump’s shtick of insulting everybody and
complaining that, like Rodney Dangerfield, he “don’t
get no respect,” is wearing thin. A man who flies
around in a gold-plated Boeing 757 and spends $1
million a week on his personal needs and pleasures,
as Rodney might put it, “don’t need no respect.”

Hillary Clinton, never a star on the fashion runway
but fretting now over how she would look in prison
orange, opened her mouth last week and out popped an
abortion remark than managed to offend both pro- and
anti-abortion campaigners, heretofore thought as
unlikely as Brotherhood Week in Mecca.

The primaries this week in Wisconsin could clarify
the bipartisan crisis, but if the past is a guide
the primaries are more likely to thicken the fog and
murk on the landscape. Hillary infuriated abortion
aficionados when she called a child in the womb a
“person” instead of the feminist-approved term
“fetus. She infuriated the anti-abortion lobby when
she said the developing child has no constitutional
rights. A candidate who says the wrong word in the
wrong way in the wrong place at the wrong time can
expect to be fried to an unbuttered crisp.

Hillary’s troubles, which spring from an addiction
to greed and avarice, threaten to overcome the
Republican establishment’s outrage to burn the
forest, drain the lake and salt the earth to stop
Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention
only three months hence in Cleveland.

John Kasich, out of the running but sniffing
opportunity in the wind, says a deadlocked
convention would be “so cool” and “so much fun,” and
so entertaining that “kids will spend less time
focusing on Justin Beiber and Kim Kardashian and
more time focusing on how we elect presidents.” The
real fun, he says, will be when “the convention
would look at somebody like me.” That’s expecting a
lot from kids.

The Republican establishment, which expects to hold
the whip hand at Cleveland, likes John Kasich all
right if that’s all there is, but its real
preference is Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House of
Representatives who sent no hearts aflutter as Mitt
Romney was blowing Republican chances four years
ago.

Mr. Ryan says all the kumbaya things that
establishment Republicans want to hear. Love your
country, but not too much. Ours is the exceptional
nation, but not that exceptional. America is just an
idea, and a pretty good one, sometimes. But
effective borders, after all, are for bigots.

Mr. Ryan once campaigned with Rep. Luis Gutierrez of
Illinois, who said he had only one loyalty, “and
that’s to the immigrant community.” That sounds
radical to a lot of Americans, but not to Mr. Ryan.
Why should it? If America is only an idea, ideas
have no borders. Sen. Lindsay Graham of South
Carolina, who has endorsed Ted Cruz (at least for
now), spins that notion further. He told the
immigration advocacy group La Raza that “an American
is an idea. No group owns being an American. Nobody
owns this. It’s an idea that’s unique to the
planet.”

Mr. Ryan once told a radio interviewer that
“immigrants from the third world” make “some of the
best Americans,” and “some of the best Americans are
the newest Americans.”

All true, as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go very
far as an explanation for the crisis before us. It’s
drivel, dreamy and gauzy and meaningless
boilerplate, and it drives the masses who found the
imperfect mouthpiece in Donald Trump, all but crazy.
It’s sentiment like that that put the establishment
in its painful place. For these masses, the great
unwashed in the eyes of establishment elites,
America is more than an idea. It’s a place, bought
by the blood and bone of generations of seekers of
the “city on a hill,” in John Winthrop’s famous
instructions for “a model of Christian charity.”

The brokered convention the elites are hankering for
would be no sure thing for the likes of Mitt Romney
or Paul Ryan or John Kasich. Many unexpected things
have happened in brokered conventions past. The
success of a dark horse like Mr. Ryan would not
“save” the party, but save Hillary Clinton, in an
orange jump suit or not. The elites would prefer to
lose honorably with the proper loser — they have
lots of experience with that — than win with the
people’s choice. John Kasich is right about one
thing. It would be a lot of fun.